It was replaced by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, headed by David Cameron, that pursued a series of public spending cuts with the intention of reducing the budget deficit.

Amid yet another government crisis, Truss resigned seven weeks into her tenure in October 2022, and was succeeded by Rishi Sunak, the first prime minister to be appointed during the reign of King Charles III.

The Conservatives' popularity remained low after the successive government crises, and they lost power to Labour at the 2024 general election, after which Keir Starmer became the new prime minister.

Thatcher was incensed by one contemporary view within the Civil Service that its job was to manage the UK's decline from the days of Empire, and wanted the country to punch above its weight in international affairs.

[2][3] Sheer luck on the early morning of 12 October 1984 saved Thatcher's life as five were killed by a bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Brighton's Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party conference.

[4] In 1981, a new tactic was used to mobilize support, as Provisional IRA and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners went on hunger strikes to claim legitimacy for their cause in the act of making the ultimate sacrifice.

Her early tax policy reforms were based on the monetarist theories of Milton Friedman rather than the supply-side economics of Arthur Laffer and Jude Wanniski, which the government of Ronald Reagan espoused.

The ensuing Falklands War saw the swift defeat of Argentina in only a few days of fighting, resulting in a wave of patriotic enthusiasm for Thatcher personally, at a time when her popularity had been at an all-time low for a serving prime minister.

It also marked the beginning of a new economic and political culture in the UK based upon small government intervention in the economy and reduced dominance of the trade unions and welfare state.

By winning the 1987 general election, by another landslide on the economic boom (with unemployment finally falling below 3,000,000 that spring) and against a stubbornly anti-nuclear Labour opposition (now led by Neil Kinnock Following Michael Foot's resignation four years earlier), she became the longest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since the 1820s.

Hard welfare reforms in her third term created an adult Employment Training system that included full-time work done for the dole plus a £10 top-up, on the workfare model from the US.

[24] The narrow majority for the Conservative government proved to be unmanageable, particularly after the United Kingdom's forced exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday (16 September 1992) just five months into the new parliament.

Major allowed his economic team to stay in place unchanged for seven months after Black Wednesday before forcing the resignation of his chancellor, Norman Lamont, whom he replaced with Kenneth Clarke.

The traditional tendency of governments to manipulate interest rates around the time of general elections for political gain is thought to have been deleterious to the UK economy and helped reinforce a cyclical pattern of boom and bust.

Blair presided over the longest period of economic expansion in Britain since the 19th century and his premiership saw large investment into social aspects, in particular health and education, areas particularly under-invested during the Conservative government of the 1980s and early 1990s.

In foreign policy, following the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, Blair greatly supported U.S. President George W. Bush's new War on terror which began with the forced withdrawal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

A memorandum from a July 2002 meeting that was leaked in April 2005 showed that Blair believed that the British public would support regime change in the right political context; the document, however, stated that legal grounds for such action were weak.

These findings have not prevented frequent accusations that Blair was deliberately deceitful, and, during the 2005 election campaign, Conservative leader Michael Howard made political capital out of the issue.

Despite the economy still being strong and unemployment remaining low, Labour's decline in support was largely blamed upon poor control of immigration and allowing Britain to become what was seen by many as an easy target for terrorists.

In major issues with foreign policy complications, He paid close attention to both the United States and the European Union, especially regarding the deregulation of the Bank of England, the Welfare to Work program, and his response to the worldwide financial crisis at the G20 summit in London in 2009.

Brown decided in 1997 to follow the American model and grant operational independence to set interest rates to the Bank of England, rather than have the power remain with the Treasury.

[41] Brown's administration introduced a number of fiscal policies to help keep the British economy afloat during the financial crisis which occurred throughout the latter part of the 2000s (decade) and early 2010, although the United Kingdom saw a dramatic increase in its national debt.

Brown was also press ganged into giving Gurkhas settlement rights in Britain by the actress and campaigner Joanna Lumley and attracted criticism for its handling of the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person to have been convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

His popularity amongst the public may be due to his handling of numerous serious events during his first few weeks as prime minister, including two attempted terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow at the end of June.

However, between the end of 2007 and September 2008, his popularity had fallen significantly, with two contributing factors believed to be his perceived change of mind over plans to call a snap general election in October 2007, and his handling of the 10p tax rate cut in 2008, which led to allegations of weakness and dithering.

Cameron promised to reduce Britain's spiralling budget deficit by cutting back on public service spending and by transferring more power to local authorities.

On 3 September 2019, Johnson threatened to call a general election after opposition and rebel Conservative MPs successfully voted against the government to take control of the order of business with a view to preventing a no-deal exit.

[60] The Benn Act, a bill to block a no-deal exit, passed the Commons on 4 September 2019, causing Johnson to call for a general election set for 12 December 2019.

[84] Sunak supports Johnson's policy of lowering net migration, continuing the plan to have asylum seekers and illegal immigrants sent to Rwanda for processing.

[85] After the plan was blocked by the UK's Court of Appeal in June 2023 due to concerns over international law and the possibility of refoulement, the government introduced the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.